


Jack Kline Destroys Toxic Masculinity

by Wolves_of_Innistrad



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Baking, Castiel and Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester are Jack Kline's Parents, Closeted Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Has Internalized Homophobia, Gen, Gender Roles, Internalized Homophobia, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Kinda?, M/M, Nail Polish, Pining Castiel (Supernatural), Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:22:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28323051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolves_of_Innistrad/pseuds/Wolves_of_Innistrad
Summary: It starts with Jack asking why some people think boys aren't allowed to bake, continues with Jack asking whether he can paint his nails, and ends with Dean realizing the toxic masculinity that existed as a prison for him all his life is being slowly torn down by the people he loves.Or how Dean learned to stop worrying about Toxic Masculinity and love himself (and Castiel)
Relationships: Castiel & Jack Kline & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Jack Kline & Dean Winchester
Comments: 38
Kudos: 107





	1. Baking

“Dean! Dean!” Jack calls, searching the halls of the bunker.

Dean looks up from where he’s sitting in a comfy chair, you could almost think he was relaxed if it wasn’t for the book in his hand being so old and dusty that he’d only be reading it for research.

“Uh, yeah Jack, in here!”

Jack comes in, his face scrunched up, lips almost in a pout and it reminds Dean incredibly much of Sammy when he was a little kid.

“What’s the problem?” Dean says, setting the book down, a little cloud of dusting rising up around it, his hand waving through it to disperse it on instinct.

“I was watching TV. and the man said that baking was only for women. I don’t understand, you bake pies, and you are a man. At least I think? My knowledge of gender is somewhat limited.”

Dean’s eyebrows go up before he laughs and shakes his head. “Listen, don’t listen to guys like that, they’re just idiots. Anybody can bake, or cook or whatever, it’s not related to being a girl or a boy or whatever.”

Jack’s frown eases into a smile. “Oh, good! I thought so, but I was confused.”

“Well, glad we cleared that up,” Dena said, the corner of his lip quirking up a bit. Jack always asked the strangest questions. He’d thought it would be annoying, but after so many years of dealing with Cas, and even with the highly inquisitive nature Sam had as a kid, he kind of finds it endearing.

Jack continues standing there for a moment, even more reminiscent of his father now and Dean looks back up at him.

“Was there something else kid?”

“Oh, well...” Jack squeezes his fingers in his opposite palm, looking away then back at Dean. “I was wondering… Would you teach me how to bake a pie?”

Slowly, so slow that it was like the sun rising in the dawn, Dean’s lips tilted into a broad smile.

“Yeah, yeah I can do that. But you gotta follow my instructions to the T” Dean stands, brushing off his jeans as he starts walking past Jack towards the kitchen.

“But Dean,” Jack asks, “I don’t want to make tea, I want to make a pie. Preferably apple pie.”

That makes Dean chuckle. “No, I meant follow them, never mind, it just means do what I say exactly. Alright?”

“Of course!”

Later when Castiel walks into the kitchen to find the floor and the table covered in flour, along with Jack and Dean having jam and flour smeared across their faces and brows, he smiles.

“Heya Cas!” Dean says, voice bright and chipper despite the mess that would normally have him seething.

“And what’s happened here?” Cas asks the questions despite it being fairly obvious.

“We made pie!” Jack answers, holding up what barely resembles a pie, the crust awkwardly laid on and burnt, some of the filling spilling over the sides.

Dean moves behind Jack, clapping him on the back. “Kid’s a natural,” he says good naturedly, and he smiles behind Jack’s back before shaking his head fervently back and forth.

Castiel laughs, staring at his boys with a smile nearly as blinding as his grace.


	2. Nail Polish

Dean is walking by when he catches sight of Jack sitting on the floor, markers spread out around him, laptop open.

“Heya, what’re you doing Jack?”

Jack looks up, frown dissolving into a smile as he spots Dean. “I was trying to discover how this person got their fingers to look like this, but I don’t quite understand. The marker does not seem to have the same effect.” He holds up a hand, and purple marker is coating both his fingernail and most of his finger down to his first knuckle.

Dean rolls his eyes. “Let me see,” he walks in, staring at the laptop before realizing what Jack is trying to emulate.

“Jack, that’s nail polish,” he says, looking at the perfectly manicured nails of some woman on YouTube.

“Nail polish? What’s that?”

Dean thinks for a moment before turning back to Jack. “It’s kinda like paint that girls use on their nails to make them look other colors. Like that video you’re watching.”

Jack nods, then he starts frowning. “So it only works on girls?”

“Uh...”

“Because while I do have a body that is mostly male, as a Nephilim I am not totally tied to one gender. Or at least that is what Castiel told me when I asked him.”

Dean tilts his head to the side. “You’re a boy,” he says, then thinking back to Cas and some things he’s said he amends, “well, you’re boy shaped at least. Like Cas is man shaped.” That sounds weird to his ears, but Dean isn’t really good at talking about that kind of thing. It’s also awkward to discuss the idea that Cas might not be entirely a guy because then Dean might have to think about what that means and he doesn’t want to.

“That sounds right. So, does that mean I can wear nail polish?”

That brings Dean up short, because never in a million years would John have let either of his boys wear nail polish. That was territory for queers and girls. Then again, doing the opposite of whatever John would do is probably the correct move to make in any parenting decision so Dean shrugs and says “sure, why not. Boys and boy shaped people, or anyone really, can wear nail polish.”

Jack smiles, nodding rapidly as he stands up. “Good! So, where can we get this nail polish?”

“Uh, I guess the store? Never bought it before.”

“Can we go get some Dean?”

Dean has to suppress a smile at how earnestly excited Jack is and he nods. “Sure, let’s go kid.”

When they get to the local CVS Dean searches for about ten minutes before he figures out where the nail polish is. “Whoa,” he says as they stand in front of the giant wall of makeup.

“Are these… All nail polishes?” Jack asks, jaw dropped in awe.

“Um, I guess?” Dean picks one up, holding the tiny bottle in his calloused hands and reading it, then peering down at some others. “Yeah, looks like it. SO, uh, what color do you want kid?”

“Hmm, I don’t know, what color are you going to get Dean?”

Dena splutters for a moment, turning to Jack with a strange look, eyes bulged out. “What color am I getting?!”

Jack turns questioning eyes over at Dean. “Well, you said boys can wear nail polish, so that means you can. aren’t you going to paint yours too?”

“I...” Dean pauses, taking a moment to have a small internal war over whether this would damage his masculinity irreparably, but in the end he decides fuck it, this can’t be any worse than when he wore those panties, and he liked that. He’s pretty sure this is just going to be annoying.

“Hmm.” Dean looks around, grabbing the cheapest nail polish in black and holding it up. “This one.”

“Oh, that’s just like dad’s wings,” Jack says, staring at the little bottle, “black with little swirls of colors like a rainbow.”

Dean looks back at the bottle, having thought it was just black, but now that he’s looking at an angle, it does kind of look like an oil slick in the rain, black with faint swirls of other colors.

“Anyway,” Dean says, trying hard not to think about that little tidbit of information, “what color are you getting?”

Jack picks up three different bottles, going through them one by one. One is a shiny purple, another is a matte yellow, and finally a white color. “I can’t decide Dean.”

“Just get ‘em all,” Dean says, patting Jack on the shoulder and leading him up to the counter. It’s only then he realizes he’s a 40 year old man, with what seems to be another young man, buying 4 bottles of nail polish. His cheeks heat, but he keeps a determined dour, stoic expression as they hand their purchases to the girl at the counter.

“Birthday present for mom?” The girl asks, batting her eyelashes at both of them.

Before Dean can reply Jack’s already started talking.

“No, these are for me. And for Dean. He said that it was okay for boys to paint their nails so we came to get some nail polish but I couldn’t decide which color to get so he said that I could get all three. He picked a color just like my dad’s w-”

Dean coughs and nudges Jack and the boy stops and smiles. Shaking his head Dean looks over at the girl, feeling his face heated with embarrassment, but the judgment he expects to see in her face isn’t there. Instead, she’s smiling in the softest way.

“That’s so sweet. I wish my dad would do his nails with me. You’re so lucky,” she says to Jack. Reaching behind her, she grabs a little coupon book and scans something. “Here, I’m giving you a discount because this made my day.”

Still reeling from her easy acceptance, and the implication he’s Jack’s dad which, while kind of true in a way considering all three of them have helped raise Jack, still hits him somewhere deep in his chest, Dean fumbles with his wallet to pay quickly. After he grabs the bag, hearing the bottles clink against one another as they walk out the door. His mind is lost in thought, over all that happened, over the tiny blue, purple and pink bracelet he saw the cashier wearing that triggered some sort of recognition in his brain but not clear enough to remember why.

He sits in the Impala for a few minutes, fingers riffling through his key ring before he tunes back in to Jack’s excited chatter about the colors he’s going to paint his nails and starts the ignition.

When they’re back in the Bunker, laying on the floor watching a video about how to properly apply nail polish that Jack found, Dean’s hand held fingers splayed out as Jack meticulously copies the woman on the screen’s movements, Dean’s stomach swoops. There’s something viscerally wrong about all of this. Or at least that’s what he thinks at first, but it doesn’t feel bad, it feels taboo, it feels like being a teenager and watching scrambled porn on TV, feels like going to a wrestling match and not understanding why he suddenly needed to hide something beneath his popcorn bag.

His gaze drifts to his fingers, to the glossy polish coating his nails, his mind flitting back to a host of things he’s enjoyed despite knowing he shouldn’t, despite feeling less of a man for it. Then he stares at Jack, face screwed up in determination, but still so happy, so energetic and free of shame or self consciousness and he has to smile. That’s freedom, that’s bravery. His little half angel kid that isn’t even sure if he’s a boy or something outside of Dean's comprehension is more of a man than Dean is most days.

When Sam returns a few days later from seeing Eileen his eyes almost immediately zero in on the cracked and partly faded nail polish on Dean’s fingers.

“What’s that?”

Dean glances down at his fingernails, having gotten used to it and not even really thinking about it anymore. “Uh, Oil,” Dean says, shoving his hands in his pockets, feeling that intense need to hide, to deflect, to cower and beat himself up with shame.

“Dean, that is totally not oil. Are you wearing-”

Before Sam can finish Dean huffs and pulls his hands out, tired of feeling like this. he’d told Jack it was okay, why couldn’t it be okay for him too?

“It’s nail polish Sammy. So what? Jack wanted to try it and roped me into it,” he says, and then, feeling like that was using Jack as a scapegoat, amends “and for what it’s worth. I kinda like it. It suits me. So shut your piehole about it.”

Sam puts up his hands “hey, I wasn’t saying it was bad. Just, not something I’d have ever expected form you Dean.”

“I got layers.”

“Like Shrek?” Sam asks, eyebrows drawn together.

“Did someone say Shrek?” says Jack, walking into the room and raising a hand in greeting “hi Sam. Are we watching Shrek?”

“Sure kiddo,” Dean says with a smile.

“That reminds me, can I get a green nail polish the next time we’re out?”

“The other three weren’t enough?” Dean asks, but he’s smirking and walking off with an arm around Jack’s shoulders.

“Hello Sam,” Castiel says as he walks in from the other room. He has matching nail polish to Dean’s on his fingers.

“What happened when I was gone?” Sam says, laughing good naturedly.

“I don’t know what you mean Sam.”

“Nothing, good to be home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to the ProfoundBond Discord who were supportive of this idea, otherwise I probably wouldn't have started writing this. I wouldn't expect regular updates though, I'm bad at that. XD
> 
> As always a big thanks to all my Wonderful Readers for all the comments, kudos and subs!


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